Entrepreneurship Cell

“A New facet to Employment”

About us :-

With the prevailing concept that Entrepreneurs are not only born but can also be identified, trained and created, an Entrepreneurship Development Cell has been developed in the Institute. The cell has been functioning in collaboration with many organizations which among others includes:

AICTE( Grant-in-aid)

Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India(EDI), Ahmedabad

National Entrepreneurship Network(NEN)

National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), New Delhi.

This cell was created with the objective of generating the spirit of “Self Employment” and “Self Reliance “among the youth and also to create awareness among them to choose entrepreneurship as career and create jobs at a breathtaking pace and can move the world of business forward.

National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) :-The National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), established in 1982 by the Government of India under the aegis of Department of Science & Technology (DST), is an institutional mechanism to help promote knowledge based and technology driven enterprises. The Board aims to convert “job-seekers” into “job-generators.”

Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), Ahmedabad :-The Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), an autonomous body and not-for-profit institution, set up in 1983 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. It is promoted by apex financial institutions, namely the IDBI Bank Ltd., IFCI Ltd., ICICI Ltd. and State Bank of India (SBI) with active support from the Government of Gujarat.

The institute is registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 and the Public Trust Act, 1950.

A national resource institution committed to promoting entrepreneurship through education, research, training and institution building.

ED Cell of Acropolis Institute is formed keeping in mind the following objectives:

Accelerate Industrial development by increasing the supply of entrepreneurs.

Enlarging the small and medium enterprise sectors, which offer better potential for employment generation.

Augmenting the supply of competent entrepreneurs through training.

Inculcating the spirit of ‘Entrepreneurship’ in youth.

E Cell act as a facilitator and resource institution to motivate, guide and help prospective and existing entrepreneurs in their entrepreneurial endeavors through positive training and interventions.

It works with the collaboration of EDI Ahmadabad, NSTEDB,NEN and various other governmental organizations so that the students can be provided active support for their future venture.

From 1996 to 2013, Professor Krishnan was a member of the faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), India. Professor Krishnan was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania (Fall 2008), and at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad (2011-12). He held the JamunaRaghavan Chair in Entrepreneurship at IIMB from 2007-10. Professor Krishnan’s main areas of interest are strategy and innovation. He was listed among the Thinkers50 India most influential thinkers in management from India (2013) and jointly received the special Thinkers50 India Innovation award (2013). Earlier, he received the Dewang Mehta Award for Best Teacher in Strategic Management in 2010. Professor Krishnan’s recent book, 8 Steps to Innovation: GoinRishikesha T. Krishnan Director- IIM Indore From 1996 to 2013, Professor Krishnan was a member of the faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), India. Professor Krishnan was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania (Fall 2008), and at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad (2011-12). He held the JamunaRaghavan Chair in Entrepreneurship at IIMB from 2007-10. Professor Krishnan’s main areas of interest are strategy and innovation. He was listed among the Thinkers50 India most influential thinkers in management from India (2013) and jointly received the special Thinkers50 India Innovation award (2013). Earlier, he received the Dewang Mehta Award for Best Teacher in Strategic Management in 2010. Professor Krishnan’s recent book, 8 Steps to Innovation: Going from Jugaad to Excellence (co- authored with VinayDabholkar, and published by Harper Collins in March 2013), outlines a systematic path for organizations to build innovation capabilities. This book has been chosen as the Best Book of 2013-14 by the Indian Society for Training and Development .Professor Krishnan is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur, Stanford University and IIM Ahmedabad.

Poyni has worked on the formation of SINE, and has implemented the incubation program. She has been involved with over 40 startups that have been incubated by SINE. Poyni has over 25 years of experience in operations, legal, finance and policy matters in industry and academia. Prior to SINE, she held senior management positions for over a decade in ICICI Securities in Mumbai (Sr. Vice President – Legal & Compliance) , and Ashima Group (General Manager), a textile conglomerate based in Ahmadabad. She was also a Fellow Company Secretary, Corporate Legal with Institute of Company Secretaries of India. Poyni is a member of the Future Trends Forum, an initiative of Bankinter Foundation for Innovation, Spain. She is a member of several government committees for entrepreneurship, and has also been contributing articles for technology and business papers and magazines.

Dr. B V Phani is currently faculty of Finance at IIT Kanpur and holds a doctorate from IIM Calcutta. He is an internationally acclaimed trainer in areas of finance and risk management with several national and international publications and awards. His research areas include Risk Management, Corporate Governance and Entrepreneurship. He is also in several government committees and part of EU Asia projects. He is guiding Aarsh on designing risk algorithms and training solutions apart from guidance for successful entrepreneurial strategies.

Abhijeet Kumar -Co Founder- Ah! Ventures

Armed with a B.Tech from IIT Mumbai, Abhijeet worked with Deloitte Consulting as an Associate Consultant before moving on to found his own company, Pronto Infotech, in the ITES space & in the last 6 years, has created a successful venture with a multi-crore revenue stream. He has worked with numerous clients across industries and in various functional domains including Tax, Retail, HR, E-Commerce, Web, Supply Chain, Technology, Banking and others. Abhijeet has the ability to evaluate ventures across the board and help entrepreneurs with intelligent cost planning through optimization of systems, processes and networks, as well as creating and achieving targets. Having consulted in both business and technical capacities, and with the extensive experience working directly and indirectly for various functional domains, with his wide network of professionals from various verticals like operations, finance, accounting, and marketing.

Mr. Neeraj Gupta - Founder & CEO - FormulateIP

Mr. Neeraj holds Bachelors of Technology degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Metallurgical and Material Sciences and Masters of Science Degree from Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden in Scientific Computing and Mathematics. Applying his business and technical background, Mr. Neeraj assists clients in protecting and expanding their domestic and international knowledge-based businesses using IP protection, licensing and strategic planning. Mr. Neeraj has played key role in developing and implementing intellectual property, business strategies and initiatives for many product and service based organizations. Mr. Neeraj is also an expert on sustainable innovation. In addition,Mr.Neeraj is co-founder and Global co-chair at IIT Mentors which is a Nation Building Initiative, is an Executive Council Member and Treasurer at IIT Alumni Centre Bangalore. He is founding EC member of Federation of Indo-Israeli Chamber of Commerce (South) and Chairman of KTH India Alumni Chapter.Mr. Neeraj is senior mentor and visiting faculty in several engineering and MBA colleges.

Glenn Reph - CEO- ISOEL,USA

Spanning three decades, Glenn’s passion for innovation has taken him from creating a multi-million dollar enterprise by the age 32 to raising funds for one of the largest non-profit organizations, World Vision. Glenn combines creative business acumen with deep humanitarian compassion to improve the lives of the people with whom he works. Beginning in 1982, Glenn opened two dozen major markets as a Vice President for Credit Card Systems (Citibank). Then in 1986, Glenn started his own company with two employees creating National Bankcard Association. Over the next ten years he created bank credit card technology and US patents and grew the organization to $1.8 billion in annual sales and 100 employees. After the successful sale of NBA, Glenn helped a friend expanded a very small ecommerce website (Coolerguys.com) with less than $60,000 in sales into a national brand exceeding $12 million in annual sales volume in less than 2 years through an innovative cross branding liscence with Marvel Comics. Over the last ten years, Glenn has been Executive Director for a number of non-profit organizations. Presently, Glenn does business consulting, serves on a number of boards.

Raj Pathak - President -APE Communication

At APE Communication, he conceptualized & successfully produced 100 episodes of TV show on entrepreneurship titled BUSINESS MANTRA. He was recognised by SWISS CONTACT for the show and invited to Bangladesh to share his experience of doing such show. He has produced many more shows on SME & Small business. In addition to being President of APE Communication, he is Promoter- Pesa4Business and Co-Founder -Divaz4business. Also he is Media Advisor to Chamber of Industrial & Commercial Undertakings (CICU) & Jaarwis Accelerator.

Educating, empowering Entrepreneurship, Raj, dons various hats as speaker , thinker , author , researcher and teacher . He is one of the most popular speaker and teacher in the Entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country. He is very passionate about addressing the growth challenges faced by Indian Entrepreneurs and the evolution of online education trends globally, especially Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) He has conducted over 200 workshops for Entrepreneurs, Faculty Leaders and Students in India, Indonesia and Malaysia. Raj , is currently involved in educational initiatives spanning across industries and knowledge sectors .He is a visiting faculty SPJIMSR,WE School, EDI. Raj has over 18 years of experience in entrepreneurship. Having started his career with one of India’s top IT firms, he went on to launch his own enterprise in the area of Web development while the Internet was still a fledgling business opportunity. Having led his startup through the boom and bust of the Internet age, he has successfully transitioned to the role of entrepreneurship educator and mentor.

Shashank is Chartered Accountant with Fifteen year post-qualification exposure in various industries including Consulting, Financial Services, Agriculture, Systems , Software, Telecom, Retail , covering gamut of operational and managerial level roles. After 5 years of services in corporate world, Prism Cement Ltd., Suvi Information and Reliance Industries Ltd., started own consulting firm since 2003, and focused towards SME Finance, Financial Planning and Business set-up services besides being involved in the other services of the company such as Project Financing & Private Equity Funding services. Has an aptitude for working with numbers and to create a high-performance environment with a highly visible leadership commitment to Quality in all verticals. Indore being a leader in SME segment, the focus for consultancy has been towards SME segment.

Talish Ray - Founding partner- TRS Law Offices

Has extensive experience in the area of practice involving Corporate Structuring, Civil Litigation, and, Regulatory laws. An alumnus of La Martiniere Girls College, Lady Shri Ram College and got her degree in Law from Delhi University. She trained as a lawyer in one of India’s premier law firms. She has worked extensively with young entrepreneurs and corporate houses presently serving as the Convener for the panel for gender sensitivity at the Executive Council of the CII (Delhi State) she has also been a senior counsel at the High Court of Delhi for the Union of India. She has lectured widely on issues of Internet Governance, IP rights, Environmental law frameworks, sexual harassment at work place and conducts training workshop for the various stakeholders in these fields. While waiting the release of her book on Gender based harassment laws in India.

Er. Shafi Patel - Managing Director- Techoz SIS Pvt. Ltd.

Shafi Patel received his Bachelor of Engineering degree from SGSITS, Indore in 1997 in Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering and Master of Technology degree in Embedded Systems in year 2008 from School of Electronics, DAVV, Indore. He has more than a decade of experience of working in many countries like Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Thailand and Germany. Since 2005, he has been running a research & development facility in Indore to provide state of art research guidance and training to engineering students. He has presented more than 10 research papers in national and international conferences and also handled many international work assignments. He has trained more than 6000 students in past seven years.

Dr. Kamal Bharani - Principal- AITR

A professional with 37 years of overall experience in Manufacturing, I T Consulting organizations and Academics. Interest is in Manufacturing, Information Technology and Industrial Management areas have published several research papers in above areas in national. &International journals. Developed methodology to implement package enabled Business Process Reengineering- published and recognized. Developed a methodology to estimate effort requirement for SAP Implementation Projects- published and recognized Consultancy Projects Areas:•Industrial Engineering-Man Machine systems design, Job evaluation, Plant Capacity, production planning and control, Facilities planning, manufacturing systems. I T Enabled Business Processes Reengineering and ERP Implementation-

Marlina manages the Entrepreneur Support Programme for National Entrepreneurship Network pan India. In her current assignment, she is responsible for managing NEN’s network of top academic institutes in central India and helps create sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems. In the last 12 years of her corporate experience, Marlina has gained considerable exposure in overseas education and has helped several students realize their dreams of international education. She has worked across a variety of marketing and sales development roles with leading brands like Radio Mirchi, Kotak Group and The British Council. Marlina has completed her Bachelor’s degree from St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad and Master’s in Business Administration from Gujarat University.

Atul N Bharat - Entrepreneurship Educator & Motivator

Having rich experience of 22 years in Corporate, Education, Entrepreneurship and Social Work Atul was nominated for IVLP International Leadership Program Entrepreneurship and represented India in the Program-Change Makers. He has worked with London Business School & Gold man sachs on social initiative of developing 10000 woman entrepreneurs with NEN in India under guidance of Prof John Mullins. He has done his certifications in Entrepreneurs Educators Development Course, Entrepreneurship from ISB Hyderabad and Entrepreneurs Educators Course, Honors from IIM Bangalore. DELEGATE- CAAYE. Atul for his dedication and commitment for the youth of the country has been awarded as BEST FACULTY NATIONALLY -2013 for outstanding contribution in engaging the students in leadership & nation building initiatives by CII Young Indians. Under his able guidance Institute has been winning NEN E WEEK INDIA Championship awards successively for years in different categories. He has been felicitated by TEACHERS EXCELLENCE AWARD BY GOVERNOR for outstanding work in Field of career development in state of M.P.

T.K.Anand Prabhu , Founder & CEO - Ichiban India

A Science graduate with a Masters in English Literature got his Post graduation in Management in 1996. He is an AIMA (All India Management Association) certified Trainer, presently pursuing his Masters in Psychology. A thorough Sales professional with a Career spanning almost 18 years, in three Different industries viz. Consumer Durables (5 years).Automobiles (5 years) and Finance & Banking (7 years) in different territories under different roles & capacities, he had been associated with various Companies of repute like – Onida, BPL Limited,Bajaj Auto Limited, Tata Motors Limited, Citicorp Finance, Tata Capital Limited and SREI BNP Paribas. His last assignment held was with Indian Institute of Management Indore. Presently also undertakes teaching assignments with DAVV and other Educational institutions of Indore on invitation.

Dr B. S. Chaurasia - Head R&D- Acropolis

A Tech Graduate from IT-BHU (Institute of Technology, BHU), and Ph.D. (in Electronics Engineering) from IIT – BHU. Possess Industrial experience of several years and teaching experience of above six years at IIT-BHU .Has in-depth research experience in the field of MEMS pressure sensor, thick film sensor, etc., and Project research experience of DRDO sponsored project at IIT-BHU, no. of Patents held: 07 + 02 pending, no. of publications: 11. He has developed several Industrial products, and panels / equipments for testing of Diesel Rail Engine components.

Prof Sanjay Bansal - Head-Computer Science-AITR

Prof Sanjay a B.E. and M.E. from Shri Govindram Seksariya Institute of Technology and Science, Indore in 1994 and 2001 respectively. He is pursuing PhD (Thesis Submitted to RGPV) from Rajeev Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishvavidyalaya, Bhopal, India. He is having rich experience of 15 Years in teaching and currently working as Head of the department for Computer Science with Acropolis .His research areas are: load balancing, fault-tolerance, performance and scalability of distributed system and cloud computing. He is a member of IEEE. He has published 16 research papers in International Journal and International Conferences. He has developed Agricultural Billing Software for M.P. State Electricity Board for 5 Lac. He had experience of developing approximate 80 big Industry Projects. He has also worked as consultant to many government organizations like M.P.E.B., POLICE, and Income Tax (Indore Collectorate) etc. He has guided many projects at U.G and P.G. level.

Dr.G.N Darwhekar, Principal Pharmacy-AIPER

He has done his Masters degree from Nagpur University and PhD from Devi Ahiliya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore. He has worked in the field of pharmacy at various capacities with a rich experience of 15 years and has published more than 40 research papers in National and International journals of repute and two books for the budding pharmacist. His research area of interest is from preformulation to drug development. He has got his research expertise in Development of BCS based novel drug delivery system including transdermal, fast dissolving drug delivery. He has got knack in development of modern herbal drug delivery system. He has got expertise in biopharmaceutics and pharmacokinetic principles, bioavailability studies and IVIVC.

Anuj Kothari - CEO- KnC Intrade Pvt Ltd

An entrepreneur with business interest in pharmaceutical logistics, wellness retailing, international trading & packaged health food manufacturing spread over different companies. Gained masters’ in business & computers and went on to become a business banker before turning an entrepreneur in 2003. Young Indians (a CII initiative) Current: National Chairman – Yuva; member, National Management Team, member Governing Council Anuj also train the trainers and undertake career counseling which has impacted over ten thousand school students.